Events

Feb

20

Past Event

Segal Seminar Series featuring Anand Kulkarni

Segal Design Institute

4:00 PM

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ITW Classroom, Ford Motor Company Engineering Design Center

Details

About the Segal Seminar Series:

Each seminar in this quarterly series brings a design researcher from leading institutions or companies to the Segal Design Institute to share cutting edge, innovative methods and techniques in an uncharted field.

Crowdbotics: Programming Software in Natural Language

Machine learning systems are now capable of doing more sophisticated work than ever before, accelerating creative production in a variety of domains. How can machine learning techniques be applied to reduce the difficulty of software creation? We’ll introduce Crowdbotics, a system for programming software applications described in natural language. Crowdbotics lets users convert descriptions of product features written in natural language to working product by matching them against combinations of libraries pulled from the public web. A built-in crowd-based expert training system allows Crowdbotics to learn over time.

Background

Anand is founder of Crowdbotics, a startup automating software development workflows. Prior to that, Anand was Chief Scientist of LeadGenius, a Y Combinator-backed startup using human computation and deep learning to automate account-based marketing. Anand has been named as one of Forbes Magazine's "30 under 30" Top 30 Entrepreneurs Under 30. Anand has published in ACM, AAAI and IEEE magazines, journals, and conferences. Anand previously held a National Science Foundation graduate research fellowship in mathematics. He holds degrees in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, Mathematics, and Physics from UC Berkeley.

Segal Seminar Series: David Karger, MIT

My group develops systems to help people manage information and share it with others. We consider both text (online discussion tools) and structured data (information visualization and management applications). Our guiding principle is that humans are powerful and creative information managers, and that the key challenge is to build systems that can accurately store and present the sophisticated thinking that people apply to their information. In this talk I'll take a rapid tour through many of these systems, discussing common motivations and solution themes.

Tackling online discussion, I'll discuss NB an online-education tool for discussing course content in the margins, Murmur, a system that modernizes the mailing list to address its drawbacks while preserving its great utility, and Wikum , a system that bridges between discussion forums and wikis by helping forum participants work together to build a summary of a long discussion's main points and conclusions. Tackling data, I'll describe a systems that empower people to create their own data-management tools simply by authoring HTML documents. Exhibit lets users author HTML that turns into interactive data visualizations. Mavo adds data editing and spreadsheet-style formulas that permit the construction of full-fledged applications in a single HTML document.

Bio:

David Karger is a professor of computer science and a member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Karger began his career in algorithms and continues to be interested in the topic, particularly in the application of algorithms to real world problems. This has led him to work in systems, networking, and coding and communication. Karger has also spent time working at Akamai and consulting for Google, Microsoft, and Vanu.

Spring Design Expo

Segal Design Institute

6:00 PM

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The Garage (Suite 300), North Campus Parking Garage/Academic Building

Details

You're invited to attend the Spring Design Expo hosted by the Segal Design Institute. Come see undergraduate and graduate student design projects as well as portfolios. This showcase of student design work will take place on Friday, June 8 from 6:00pm until 8:00pm at The Garage on Northwestern's Evanston campus.

Northwestern Engineering - PhD Hooding Ceremony

McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science

2:00 PM

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Ryan Family Auditorium, Technological Institute

Details

Although there are no tickets required for this ceremony, the Ryan Family auditorium could reach seating capacity. There will be a live video feed in Tech LR-5. Families with small children may find the overflow room more accommodating to their needs.

1 p.m. The Ryan Family auditorium opens to guests of graduates.Graduates gather in LR-2 for graduation instructions.

1:15 p.m. Graduates check-in at the registration tables just outside LR-2 in Tech.